: need more information or disinformation? NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND DISCLOSURE Emotiv ': AN ANALYSIS
Sergio Zabot
Speaking in Milan, during the first meeting of the "Energy Dialogue", organized by the House Energy A2A, Chicco Testa has complained about the lack of information professionals on energy issues, particularly with regard to nuclear power, which hampers rational public debate and widespread. So far nothing unusual, the argument can be shared and you can discuss it. But then head went further and emphasized the need to rely on an emotional pro-nuclear that exploits the fears of climate change and energy security. As ask reporters to deceive readers because the end justifies the means ...
head accuses environmentalists oppose the contradiction of a source of electricity in large quantities which does not generate CO 2 , and the political world and the general public, however, the contradiction to bind the survival of the production system and the Italian way of life to people as unreliable Libyan leader Gaddafi and situations not directly controllable as Russia-Ukraine relationship.
Well, our humanist Hegel ignores, or rather hide the fact that to produce 40 tonnes of uranium a year that are used to power a 1,600-megawatt reactor, EPR, like the ones you want to build in Italy, we must start by something like 8 million tons of rock, equivalent to the pyramid of Cheops, which must first be extracted, minced, then diluted with 1.4 million cubic meters of water and 22 thousand tons of sulfuric acid, to get to the end of 350 tons of yellowcake , an oxide containing 0.7% fissionable uranium, plus the equivalent, in fact, a pyramid of Cheops of waste per year.
Then quest'uranio must be enriched to increase the fissile part, that is uranium 235, at least 3.5%. The enrichment achieved by centrifugation turning uranium into gas, uranium hexafluoride. To do this, are 370 tons of fluorine gas is very light, highly volatile, and at the end of the process is highly radioactive, could not be disposed of and that includes managing very expensive.
Finally you get 40 tons of uranium fuel in the form of uranium dioxide, as well as 250 tons of depleted uranium, then not so poor is, since it still contains 0.3% of fissile uranium, and radioactive.
In conclusion, to operate an EPR for a year consumes energy equivalent to 190 thousand tons of oil by the emission of tons of CO 670mila 2 .
Poor thing, since this corresponds to only 56grammi CO 2 per kWh to be produced. However, if we consider that the construction of the plant is responsible for issuing other 12grammi CO 2 per kilowatt hour and that the waste management involves a "debt" estimated at between 30 and 65grammi CO 2 per kilowatt hour, we arrive at a figure somewhere between 96 and 134grammi CO 2 per kilowatt-hour that will be produced by nuclear power plant, about one third of emissions of a combined cycle gas.
But the free ride lasts until the availability of hard mineral with relatively high concentrations of uranium. As the purity of the uranium ore will fall, it will take more energy to extract uranium and fossil CO 2 inevitably come to equal the emissions of a gas plant.
As for the fears of energy security, this is one of the strongest ideological pressures and media made of the need to convince the Italians nuclear energy: the oil comes mainly from Arab countries, the gas from Russia of Putin and Gaddafi's Libya, all countries which are politically unreliable, not to mention Venezuela's Chavez and Bolivia's Morales, who nationalized the oil industries and gas.
Well, few people know that on a global annual demand of about 70 thousand tons of uranium, only 20 thousand tonnes, up 28%, come from countries 'stable', such as Australia, Canada , USA. Other 20 thousand tons come from Kazakhstan, Russia, Niger, Namibia and Uzbekistan, countries not particularly stable. " Finally, 30 thousand tons necessary to balance the needs of nuclear reactors come from the Russians in dismantling nuclear arsenals. Now, dear Chicco, because Putin would be unreliable when it sells the gas and become reliable when it gives us the uranium?
Another workhorse of the proponents of nuclear power in France is that electricity costs less because it has nuclear weapons. In fact the conditions that led France to become a nuclear power are the result of the policy of General de Gaulle to create, in the cold war, a French-led European nuclear pole.
The French civil nuclear power was born in symbiosis with nuclear weapons, to share the enormous costs to produce uranium for enrichment and especially the so-called "weapon grade". The French military and civil effort was impressive and most of the costs, research and development to the treatment of spent fuel have never been in the cost of kilowatt hours that citizens are charged in price, but they are well hidden fees, which the French pay. Do not forget that EDF, the electricity company that operates nuclear power plants is a state and that the military arsenals and enrichment plants and reprocessing are state-owned uranium.
The French experience is unique, especially in a liberalized market where the costs should be transparent and industrial activities have to compete on the market. On the other hand just read the reports of the French Court of Accounts to be aware of the serious omissions and the absolute lack of transparency found in the nuclear sector and in particular in the "decommissioning", stigmatized by the French courts regularly in their reports.
In an article published on Energy Daily June 4, Goofy Ranci, former president of the Energy, says that France maintains administrative fee for all the little people, household and commercial and these rates are low so as to form a powerful barrier against ' entry of competitors and that are economically sustainable as long as EdF can use the energy produced exclusively from old nuclear power plants already written off, and for which it is believed there was an implicit government subsidy at least for the costs of research, development and engineering. And I would add to the reprocessing of spent fuel that is the responsibility of the military and for decommissioning, as EdF, according to the complaint, the Court of Auditors, which should not set aside the money.
Now it is undeniable that the success of the 1987 referendum has been determined by emotions caused the Chernobyl disaster. But Italy's exit from nuclear power has not been determined only by emotions, but also by specific political calculations even ideological.
is worth to mention the fact that the referendum questions were intended to abolish key regulations on the location of nuclear power plants and contributions to Municipalities and regions with nuclear power plants, which would have made it impossible to find a town willing to host on its territory a nuclear facility or a deposit of radioactive waste.
It 'also important to remember, at that time as the DC and the PCI were strongly opposed to the questions proposed by the Radical Party, the Liberal Party and the Socialist Party. The first strategy adopted by the Government of that time against the referendum was that the early dissolution of the stalemate that had occurred in the relationship between DC and the PSI: the protagonist was Ciriaco De Mita, who decided early elections to break the convergence of those months between secular parties and particularly between Craxi and panels.
After the elections, the appointment before the referendum, the DC and PCI, initially hostile to the questions, is in favor of "yes". This sudden change of course of the two major parties derived from the political implications that could lead to an eventual defeat of the formation of the "no" centered on the axis DC and PCI, as opposed to a secular-progressive camp consists of Radicals and Socialists.
The reinterpretation of this period demonstrates that the result of the referendum of 1987, as well as being the result of emotions was especially son of ideology. E 'and then correct to say that that choice was emotional and ideological.
What is less obvious is that even now the return of Italy in the nuclear wave is due to an equally emotional even ideological, expertly piloted by a government that mystifies the facts and stimulates most ancestral fears of the citizens.
Now, compared to 1987, the situation was reversed: the emotions of that time, even if motivated by a strong concern about the possible health and environmental consequences of radioactive fallout, the return to the nuclear dispute on a rational basis and supporters of nuclear begging now, the return on the emotional and ideological bases, such as fear of the increase the cost of oil, the unreliability of natural gas producing countries, the fatality of a development that will lead us to an ever-increasing consumption of energy, the inevitability that to preserve our planet and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must choose the lesser evil. Perhaps Chicco Testa did not realize that his dream is a reality and now claims that the "professionals" furthering his lies relying on emotion in favor of the people. We know another who has similar delusions ... but that's another story.
The truth is that energy efficiency and renewables are in strong competition with nuclear and nuclear supporters blatantly lie when they say that there is no competition between nuclear and energy efficiency . This divergence is likely to increase for two reasons.
First, all energy technologies distributed, including energy-saving technologies are surely destined to become less expensive because of the large production volumes and continuous improvements that allow you to churn out ever more new products "more saving" of the above. This is not the case for centralized systems and especially for nuclear plants that historically tend to cost more and more, in contrast with the so-called "learning curves of technology." On the other hand the design of a nuclear component until it is achieved by passing so many years, even when you invent new products and technologies, can not be used immediately and must wait entering into a new production chain.
In second order, the market is beginning to recognize the benefits achievable by the distributed technologies, both in terms of profits, both for the high relapse that this implies on employment levels in local level. Energy conservation, distributed generation and renewable sources of electricity in particular, are beginning to show their explosive power to break through barriers that until recently seemed impenetrable, drastically reducing costs and improving performance. Only in cogeneration plants in Italy you are installing hundreds of units per year 4 thousand megawatts of power for a year. They are also emerging new classes of technologies, some still immature as solar thermal or hydrogen-powered fuel cells that are destined to revolutionize the transportation market.
Terna forecasts on the evolution of electricity demand in Italy, updated in November 2008, show, in a scenario called "development", ie without the implementation of this potential energy, 415 billion kilowatt hours in electricity needs and the needs 74 thousand megawatts of power at 2018.
Now, without going into details of what impact the economic collapse underway on final consumption and shifting to a first approximation to the needs indicated by Terna 2020 to 2018, the goals of the package 20-20-20 "mean that for 2020 there is a reduction of final consumption of about 80 billion kilowatt hours and a further 70 billion kilowatt hours are produced from renewable sources. The need to supplement conventional sources, is reduced to 265 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and less than 60 thousand megawatts of conventional thermal power, 30% lower than the electricity requirements of 2009 (350 billion kilowatt-hours) and 22% less than the gross thermal power is currently installed (73,300 megawatts).
At this point someone has to explain where there is space to build 4-5 nuclear power plants that would produce 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, as requested by Fulvio Conti, CEO Enel, when already in 2020, implementing the package 20-20-20 "risk a surplus of between 20% and 30%.
What is worrying is that our Government, instead of strengthening the very support for energy efficiency and renewables, is the Faustian pact between industry lobbyists and financial contracts promising to build a billion dollar nuclear industry is extremely risky and expensive, guaranteed by the state, and with taxpayers' money.
In fact, the government slows down the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency, real clean alternatives, to make room for the interests of the nuclear lobby and these funds will be diverted to the deployment of a and sustainable development, territorial, that only the energy efficiency and renewable energy sources can produce true.
